


5 Times Hannah Shepard met Garrus Vakarian

by AceQueenKing



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Confronting Prejudice, F/M, Families of Choice, Gen, Major Character Death - Shepard, Though she gets better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:29:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: It seemed to take forever, but when she finally, finally found her daughter, bruised but not broken, alive and not dead, with the scarred but dutiful man, whose comically talons would not stop holding her daughter’s gently – she had only a few words, all focused on a beautiful future.





	1. The First Time Hannah Shepard Met Garrus Vakarian

Nothing would bring Janie back.

_Nothing._

There was little comfort in knowing that she wasn’t the only one mourning. Most of Janie’s crewmen and even a few of her friends from basic had traveled to the Citadel for her “funeral.”  
  
There wasn’t a body. Therefore, logically, there shouldn’t be a burial, but the Alliance brass had seen fit to honor her heroic daughter with a memorial service. 

There was nothing here for Hannah but mourning and loss and raw pain so intense she wanted nothing more than to scream and pull her hair out, just so the pain of _that_ could distract her from this. 

But it seemed like too much effort to bother with.  Everything did.

Truth be told, she did not remember most of the funeral, too caught up in her disbelief that Janie was _gone_. She certainly did not dwell on the presence of multiple aliens who had attended. Janie seemed to have cultivated friends from every single star system. 

Even a Turian – C-SEC, young – stood in mourning, watching the casket with his sharp blue eyes. He sat a row across from her, up front, eyes never wavering from the casket that did not hold her Janie.

She didn’t think much of it.

At best, she had a passing thought that it was strange, a turian at a human’s funeral.  
  
But it was even more strange to be burying your not-even-thirty-year-old daughter.

She kept expecting Janie to stroll in the door, laughing; the same way Janie used to as a little girl when she’d purposely lose her mother in department stores. _“Did you see Momma? Did you see?”_ She’d say, laughing, her freckled cheeks flush with pride from being able to give her mother the slip. 

Her eyes kept wandering to the door, hoping against hope.

The idea was absurd. Janie was dead, Janie would never laugh again.

She wouldn’t even have the ability to bury her, not properly; They’d never found her body. They never would.

It was a human service, catholic; a standard alliance funeral arrangement. She listened to a priest tell them all about Janie’s many career accomplishments. It was pat; basic. Died before her time. A hero.  
  
But he did not talk about any of her favorite Janie attributes – the way she could become friends with anyone, the way she lit up a room with a smile, the stubborn streak of her father’s that flared up every damn time someone told her she couldn’t do something.  
  
That’s not my Janie, she thought. _This isn’t my daughter._

That thought – _this isn’t my daughter –_ kept repeating through her head, again and again, throughout the service.  
  
She was still thinking it when the service ended.  
  
She only stopped when the turian came up to her and held out a hand, hesitantly. Almost shy. She wondered if he’d never had to give the “Sorry for your loss” speech yet. 

“My name is Garrus Vakarian. I was a member of your daughter’s ground team when we were…when we were fighting Saren. It was an honor to serve with her.”  
  
His sub-vocals were thick and rich with a sadness that she understood all too well despite the differences in their cultures. “She is…She _was_ the best.”  
  
“Yes.” She said, her voice strangled by her grief. “She was.”  
  
He’d nodded, eyes tight and angry, and left her to her thoughts.  
  
 She didn’t think of him. She thought of Janie, wonderful, alive, _beautiful_ Janie. The same Janie who was dead and beyond her help, now.  
  
She remembered that the turian followed her to the burial, vaguely. That wasn’t unusual; most of her crew-mates, past and present, did.  
  
She remembered him only by virtue of the fact that he was the only turian there. Hannah’s body watched him for a moment but her mind, once again, was on Alchera.  
  
Her daughter was gone, simply…gone. Burned up on re-entry, they said.  
  
Had it hurt, she wondered? Die Janie die with the peace that she had gone down with her ship, saving the lives of over half the crew? Or had she been terrified, watching her oxygen thin and thin until she choked to death in the cold, hard vacuum of space? Or had she died screaming, burning as she disintegrated over a wintery grave?  
  
Too many questions, and none of them mattered.  
  
Janie was gone, gone, _gone_ ; period. There was a horrible finality to it; Janie would never grow old, never bring her grandchildren.  
  
The alliance presented her with a medal instead, in honor of Janie’s services.  
  
It didn’t bring Janie back, so she didn’t care. She did not cry as they presented it to her. She merely held it tight and thought _this is the last_ _medal Janie will ever_ _receive._ It was her second Star of Terra, but Hannah Shepard would never receive Janie’s first: It was lost over Alchera, just like her daughter.  
  
The Alliance gave Janie a thirty-gun salute. The same thirty-gun salute they’d given her father nearly thirty years before. Janie, of course, was too young to remember, and now she would never even remember the story.  
  
But Hannah remembered.  
  
She remembered Jack couldn’t even be identified by his remains – how he had been a mere pile of meat that someone, in infinite, terrible kindness, had plucked out from his all-terrain vehicle, put in a bag, and sent home to be buried. It seemed almost a cruel decision. They asked if she wanted to see his remains. She had said no.

She did not want to remember Jack as pieces of meat and bone. 

She did not want to imagine her daughter frozen in the arctic wastes.

But she did that anyway. Winter had a way with her, it seemed.  
  
It was snowing the day she’d buried Jack,too. It was winter, and it was cold. Chicago winters were hard, and the wind made things worse. She felt the unpleasant itch of frozen skin on her face and Janie howled, but she had held her tight until Jack’s coffin was buried in the cold, hard ground.  
  
She hadn’t had to worry about that at her daughter’s funeral; it never rained on the Citadel. The weather was always a perfect slightly-warm temperature, cool enough for the asari tastes but just warm enough for turian sensibilities.  
  
Anderson came up and clapped her on the back. “She was a good soldier, Hannah.” He said. “One of our best. She was a hero, right up until the very end.”  
  
The words were meant to comfort, but they did not.  They tasted like ash, and reminded her far too much of the last funeral she’d been to.  
  
Jack died with his boots on, Colonel Williams had said. One of the first to fight on Shanxi, and one of the last to leave. He’d taken himself out, and an entire platoon of turian bastards with him.  
  
A hero, they’d said. She should be proud, they said. He was a true patriot serving a noble cause.  
  
It hadn’t mattered. Six months later, the war was a footnote, and the Alliance was pressing for peace with the turians.  
  
Six months later, Jack was still dead and she still had a baby to feed.  
  
She’d reenlisted that spring. At the time, she had been proud, had loved how Janie had excitedly told other children that her parents were soldiers, heroes. Now she wondered if she had led Janie down this path; if this choice – made in Jack’s name, for Jack’s honor – had inexplicably signed her daughter’s death warrant, if she had reduced Janie’s many futures to only one.  
  
Would Janie’s war against the Geth be so similarly remembered? Six months from now, would she be shaking hands and playing nice with a Geth Colossus, wondering if this was the one who had given the orders to shoot down her daughter’s ship?  
  
She did not know. She would never know. And it did not matter.

Janie was dead.  
  
A tear slipped down her cheek and she angrily slapped it away. She was now Captain Hannah Shepard and she could show no weakness, not even for her daughter’s death. An XO could show emotions, but a Captain had to be hard, made of steel every bit as solid and cold as the small medal she held in her hand.  
  
Janie was dead, and she had no daughter, no husband, just two hard, cold pieces of metal that said _they served with honor_ but ultimately meant nothing. They would gleam in her cabin but they would not comfort her. They would only serve to remind her of the dead.  
  
She was told it was an honor that Janie would be given funeral services on the Citadel. Very few were allowed such a privilege – Spectres, Councilors. You should be honored, they said. She’s the first human to be honored in this way.  
  
But Hannah wasn’t.  
  
On the other side of the line, Garrus Vakarian pressed his hand to his heart and bowed his head, a still-familiar gesture despite the fact that she hadn’t seen it it for over thirty years. A turian military salute. The highest symbol of respect they could give, generally given only for very high ranking superiors: primarchs, generals.  
  
Not to mere commanders. And _not_ to outsiders.  
  
He held it for a long time.  
  
She remembered this most of all, because that was the moment she realized that Janie had had a special power, one that transcended species.  
  
She realized she wasn’t the only one mourning Janie’s loss. The galaxy would mourn Janie, in it’s own way. Even the turians.  
  
She had wanted to say something to the young man, some words of comfort, but the words froze on her tongue.  
  
Instead, she watched as an older turian arrive in near-identical C-SEC armor; he wrapped an arm around the young man and led him away.  
  
Thirty years down the line, and she thought the same thought she had every time she saw a turian of a certain age, with cracked and gnarled plates: W _as it you, who gave the order to kill my husband?_ _Was it you?_  
  
But it did not matter.  
  
She turned and strode back to the Kilimanjaro.  
  
If Janie and Jack had given their lives for the Alliance, then she would honor them both by doing the same.


	2. The Second Time Hannah Shepard Met Garrus Vakarian

She’d gotten the report about Janie’s sudden re-appearance from the Alliance brass, a mere footnote on a bog-standard security risks report. If she didn’t insist on reading every message sent from the brass – if she had begged off the duty on some low-level ensign – she wouldn’t have heard it at all.  
  
No one had bothered to send her word that Janie was alive and now that she'd heard that tantalizing whisper, no one would confirm it for her. Was she on a two-year long deep cover op, one so secret that she had to fake her own death, even to her own mother?   
  
No one knew, or, if they did, they didn’t think it was important enough to notify her own god damned mother.   
  
The report had suggested that Jane Shepard – _her Janie_ – hero of the Skyllian Blitz, hero of the Citadel, pride of the N7 program – had gone rogue and was working for Cerberus.  
  
That thought was laughable. She remembered the young turian man at her daughter’s funeral, head held low in a long and respectful salute. She remembered the teary quarian and fretful asari who had clung to each other throughout the service, and even the silent but reverent Krogan who had watched the small churchyard as if he was performing security. Perhaps he was. Anyone who could inspire a krogan, an asari, a turian, and a quarian to follow them wasn’t going to advocate for Terra Firma or any of their ilk, let alone Cerberus. Which meant, if the so-called Cerberus reports were true, then this wasn’t her daughter – it was some clone, or an impostor; someone wearing Janie’s skin but not her little girl who had hung upside down on a jungle gym nearly every time they went planet-side.  
  
Hannah tried to find out more information – were there any recordings of her daughter? Classified. Voice clips? Classified. Did they have any proof that this was really Janie? Classified. Could they give her any details at all? No. That was classified.  
  
Hannah Shepard did not like classified.  
  
So Hannah had taken initiative and sent a message to her daughter’s omni-tool.  
  
 _Is it you, honey? Please please please let this be you. Really you. I miss you._  
  
It bounced back to her in seconds.   
 _  
Unable to deliver: this Contact cannot be found._  
  
She dug a bit deeper and called in a few favors from the intelligence branch, and got Janie’s alleged new omni-contact. She took a deep breathe and wrote out a new message, one longer and more guarded:   _  
  
So I have to find out my child is alive third-hand from the Alliance brass? Where the hell have you been?  
  
I figure whatever you’re doing is classified, likely part of your __Spectre_ _Operations. Just stay safe out there, and keep doing your mom proud. And sneak something through a secure channel next time._  
  
Love,  
  
Your mother,   
Captain Hannah   
  
This one went through.   
  
 She waited for a reply.   
  
 And waited.

 And waited.  
  
 And waited.  
  
But there was none.  
  
After six weeks of waiting, she locked herself into her room on the Orizaba and cried herself to sleep while her crew enjoyed shore leave at the Citadel.  
  
\- - - 

She was awoken by the insistent sound of her call button, blaring loudly. She squinted, blinked at the name on her omni’s display – _Councilor David Anderson_.  
  
She thought of ignoring the alarm for a moment, but only for a moment. If the human ambassador called her, it was probably important.  
  
And soldiers always did their duty.  
  
He appeared as she slammed the accept call button. His eyes were kind but preoccupied, the look of a man who has a million troubles but no answers. She’d known it well; Jack, too, had always had that face, especially after he'd been deployed.   
  
“Councilor.” She saluted, and Anderson returned it. She was thankful that he did not call into question her outfit, well crumpled in her sleep. “Something I can help you with, sir?”  
  
“No need for titles, Hannah,” he said, all smiles. He was at his office; despite it being nighttime on the Citadel’s cycle, the presidium remained well lit and not a stitch was out of place on Anderson’s impeccable uniform. “We’ve been through enough together not to bother with formalities.”  
  
“Well then, what can I do for you, David?”  
  
 “It’s not something you can do for me. I’m afraid this is more of a social call.” He leaned forward in his chair. “There's no way to break this softly, so I'm just going to come out and say it. Hannah, I saw Jane. She’s here. Meeting with the rest of the council.”  
  
“What?” She took a deep breath; another. Janie had been so far away from her, so far, and the thought of her being so suddenly close was unbearable. “I thought…I thought it wasn’t her, I thought – “  
  
“I had my doubts, too. But the way she moves, the way she talks…” Anderson looked down. “It’s just like Jack, Hannah. I don’t think Cerberus is capable of copying that. She’s still got that Harper swagger. Maybe she’s got her mother’s luck, after all. …I think it’s her, Hannah.”  
  
“David,” she breathed. “Where is she now?”  
  
“Still in the meeting with the other Council members. If you hurry, you might catch her. I’ll try to detain her, but I don’t think she’ll be here long.”  
  
“David, I’ve...I’ve got to go.” She had to leave, had to leave now; she was _so close_ to answers, so close that she had to get them.   
  
“Understood.”  David’s mouth tilted into a soft smile. “See you in a few, Hannah.”  
  
She cut the comms and all but ran out of the ship, the ship’s VI helpfully reminding her that shoes were required to exit the ship when docked in the Citadel. She took a madwoman’s path through the Presidium, demanding a sky-car and flying through the presidium so fast she was surprised C-SEC hadn’t tackled her when she got to the Citadel tower.   
  
And when she finally arrived at the Council’s heavy doors, Janie wasn’t there.  
  
There were two people standing near the doorway to the chambers, though – a young, _perfectly_ proportioned woman who was just a bit too _perfectly_ casual to just be waiting for a friend. The other, a young turian, with a long, distinctive geometric tattoo rarely seen outside of Trebian space: Palaven, Cipritine.   
    
Thirty years later, she was still amazed she could remember all the different colony marks. Bagging a skullface with that pattern generally secured you a drink or two if you survived the firefight, she remembered, because they were rare and, usually, quite important. Jack had gotten one or two with those marks and had been a hero for it; she wondered if he had killed one of this young man’s relatives.  
  
She wondered if one of them had killed Jack.  
  
But it did not matter. The turians were her allies now, and she needed to remember that. The Turian Hierarchy no longer ordered their soldiers to shoot at her; instead, they commed her to argue about supplies, ship movements, or colony squabbles.  
  
Well, for once, perhaps, she could have them help her. She stared at him a moment, wondering if perhaps he might have seen her daughter, if turians could distinguish between humans well enough to recognize one if she showed him a picture.   
  
He turned more toward her, and more than the pattern seemed familiar; she remembered, suddenly, the young man at her daughter’s funeral had looked quite similar. Same pattern, same armor – it must be him, though he had did not have the long and menacing scar covering half his face when last they’d met. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and recalled the name of that soldier.

“Garrus – Garrus Vakarian?”  
  
The young man reflexively stood up straight and dusted off his collar. He took the two steps forward to meet her, and took her small hand in his absurdly large one. His gloves did little to mask the talons hiding undrneath.   
  
“Yes. You’re Shepard’s mother, aren’t you?” He stared keenly at her, as if trying to seek out the family resemblance. Perhaps he was.   

“Yes.” She licked her lips, knowing she should give some form of polite pleasantry but failing to do so. Janie was so close, so near. He would understand, she thought.  
  
She remembered his sorrow, even if it was but a shadow on her own.  
  
“Is she – is she here? Janie?” She wasn’t behaving like a captain, she thought. A captain would keep their voice neutral, would not betray the hope that hummed and pulsed through her veins.  
  
But few captains were mothers, and none she knew had buried their daughter only to find out that she was, beautifully, terrifyingly, _possibly_ alive.  
  
Garrus Vakarian’s big hand squeezed her own. “Yes.”   
  
His buxom companion frowned. “Do you really think we should be revealing that information to the Alliance?”  
  
He turned back toward his companion, indignation apparent in his stance. “This is the Commander’s _mother_. She’s ok.”  
  
The woman crossed her arms, unconvinced. Hannah gave her a hard glare. She wasn’t going to stopped from seeing Janie just by the brass on her uniform, and it alarmed her that this woman considered _Alliance_ on par with _enemy_.  Janie would never think that. _Never_.  
  
She wasn’t surprised when, a few moments later, Garrus Vakarian joined her.  
  
“Is it…Is it really her?” She asked, hope burning an unquenchable fire in her voice.   
  
“Yeah.” He folded his arms and looked out over the presidium. “Yeah. I don’t know how, but…it’s her.”  
  
“Were you with her? The whole time?” Had his grief been an act, designed to help sell her daughter’s death? Had he merely been an actor, sent to trick her?   
  
“No.” He gave a small, dry laugh. “I wish I was. I’d…missed her.”   
  
“I do too.” Her hands shook and she prayed the turian did not see the weakness. “So…so much. Is she…Are you really sure it’s not her, and not some clone?”  
  
It was a scary thing, hope.   
  
He was quiet for a moment. He looked up, as if the answer to the question was in the oh-so-perfect slight breeze of the citadel’s finest spire.   
  
“Yeah. It’s her,” he answered finally, his gaze remaining with the clouds.   
  
“So…Cerberus?” She exhaled a shaky breath. “Is it true?”  
  
“Somewhat.” He nodded toward his companion, still at the door.   
  
“How? Janie would never join Cerberus. Is it some kind of deep op?”  
  
“Something like that.” He hesitated. “But I think you should let her explain. It’s…complicated.”   
  
“Are you Cerberus?” She asked. “Last I heard, they didn’t take alien recruits.”  
  
“Hell no.” He looked at her, eye steely blue, unwavering. “I’m on Shepard’s team. Not the Illusive Man’s.”  
  
It was odd, to be relieved that a turian was in her daughters’ camp.  
  
“Are you…friends?”  
  
He tilted his head. “Yes.”  
  
She took a deep breath. “Good friends?”  
  
“Yes.” Those intense eyes were on her again, measuring her up. “Is that a problem?”  
  
“No, just…How…” She forced the words out of her throat, her hope all but suffocating. “How do you know for sure? That it’s her?”  
  
“Oh. When I saw her…” He tugged at his collar. “I thought she was a…a spirit. Or a…a fantasy. I was in a bad place. Under fire. So I gave her my gun, and I thought…I thought it would fall to the ground, you know? Proof I was crazy.”   
  
“Instead, she blew a merc’s head off from 500 meters.” His eyes turned to her, with a strange sort of warmth burning in them. “And she is the only woman  I’ve ever met who could _ever_ do that without a visor.”  
  
“But if Cerberus…Cerberus cloned her, they could give her the reflexes -”  
  
“She remembers things.” He was quiet, his voice whisper-soft. “Little things. A clone might get the big things, but…She remembered me getting a letter from my dad. How a bit of dextro food I gave her on the Normandy tasted. Where I kept my sister’s picture in my office. If it were a clone, they’d never be able to get that level of detail.”  
  
“Oh, God.” She bent her head and put her hands on her head. “I’m…Oh god, Janie.”  
  
“Yeah.” He was quiet. “It’s hard for me to believe, too.”  
  
“Thanks by the way, for speaking up for me there. To get so close and not be allowed to see her.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’d do.”  
  
“Hmm.” He tilted his head. “The way she talks about you, I don’t think that that will be a problem. I doubt anyone could stop Shepard from doing what she wanted.”   
  
“I don’t think that she wants to see me.” She closed her eyes. “I sent her a message. She didn’t reply.”  
  
“Hmm.” Vakarian leaned in close, and she reflexively stiffened. It might be thirty years later, but turians always hit the part of her brain that registered _threat_. If he noticed her discomfort, he didn’t acknowledge it.   
  
“All her comms are watched by Cerberus.” He whispered, quietly, and then withdrew.  
  
“Oh.”  She ran a hand through her hair. “Oh _Janie_. What sort of trouble are you in?”   
  
He didn’t get a chance to answer, as the door slammed open and Janie – _her Janie_ – walked out. Well, more like stormed out.  
  
And it was _her_. She had had many doubts prior to the door opening – despite what Garrus Vakarian may say, good friend or not, he wasn’t Janie’s mother and he didn’t _know_ what she did. But she knew how Janie’s left foot always dragged a bit – the result of an injury she’d acquired in childhood and hid, and, which, as a result, never quite healed right. She knew how how Janie always moved her head from side to side when she started walking, evaluating her surroundings  – a trick she had been taught by both her mother and grandfather.   
  
She _knew_ Janie and this _was_ Janie; every mannerism, every move.  
  
Lazarus raised from the dead.  
  
 Janie glanced at the brunette woman and nodded; the brunette woman fell in line behind her with a military ease.   
  
And when she turned her face – and her mother could see her profile – what she saw took her breathe away.  
  
Janie had always been lucky for a soldier, and had boasted unmarred skin. It was the luck of the south-side irish, Grandpa Harper had quipped, as he rubbed the freckles on Janie’s fair face. That was Janie’s features in a nut shell – pale peach skin, bright green eyes, vibrant red hair.   
  
Traits she shared with her mother.  
  
Now, Hannah realized, the more apt comparison was not Lazarus – whole and healed – but Frankenstein’s monster – patchwork, tattered and torn.  
  
Janie’s cheeks were marred with huge swatches of red, angry scars. The seemed almost lit from within, as if they had circuitry pulsing underneath, not blood. Her eyes, always the most vibrant green, were muddled, troubled; wherever Janie had been for two years when she’d been forced to play dead, it was nowhere good.  
  
“Hey, Garrus, done admiring the view?” Janie asked, and she felt the turian next to her whip around. Before he could say anything though,  Janie saw the woman beside him and stopped. Simply stopped.  
  
“Mom?” She whispered, and Hannah Shepard’s heart broke.  
  
Jane Shepard – her Janie – was not the sort of girl who ever whispered. She’d known even as a child that Janie would have a voice for command. Loud, brassy, and just a smidge bossy.  
  
“Mom?” Janie asked again, and then before she knew it, she was running, pulling her arms tight across her only child.  
  
“Yes.”   
  
She felt something wet leaking down her collar. She wasn’t sure if it was Janie’s tears or her own, but she held her daughter tighter.   
  
“Hey, Miranda, why don’t we check out the perimeter?” Vakarian said, and she was grateful, for once, that a turian was in Janie’s corner. Miranda nodded crisply, and they were left alone.  
  
“I think you have a lot to tell me, little one,” she whispered.  
  
But Janie said nothing, and simply held her tighter.


	3. The Third Time Hannah Met Garrus Vakarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The third time she met Garrus Vakarian, it was to take her daughter away, and it broke her heart.

The third time she met Garrus Vakarian, it was to take her daughter away, and it broke her heart. 

Janie had explained things to her, basic things – what she was doing  _(stopping threats against humanity)_   and who she was doing it with ( _Cerberus; she’d had no choice_ ). If Janie had left some questions unanswered ( _her two year gap; the scars on her face_ ), then Hannah trusted that she had a damn good reason for doing so.

But this was almost – even for a mother – beyond the pale. Arahot was an op gone bad on every level – and one that was indefensible.

Janie would have to come home. Janie would have to face trial.

And, as her mother, there was nothing Hannah Shepard could do about it. There was no way to make it better; no comforting words to say.

Janie simply had to be taken in.

But even though Hannah Shepard hated doing it, but she’d be damned if she let any other officer slap cuffs on her. If Janie had to be taken into custody, it was going to be by her mother, talk of preferential treatment be damned.

She hadn’t expected Janie’s crew to be happy as the crew of the _Orizumba_ boarded the _Normandy_ , of course; what she hadn’t expected was that so many would be outright hostile.

A biotic woman covered in tattoos led her to the new Normandy’s mess hall, snarling all the while. She did not ask any questions as to who she was; it was obvious the woman would not answer.

She talked to her only once, whirling around as they arrived in the mess hall. It was curiously empty, and Hannah couldn’t help but move one hand back toward her Alliance-issued pistol.

“You’re Shepard’s mom, right?”  
  
“Yes, that’s right.” She didn’t move her hand away from her hip, but the woman didn’t move toward her. Instead, she made a _tsch_ noise and folded her arms.

“She’s the only fuckin’ reason that I don’t blow up your god damned ship,” she said. Hannah said nothing; it appeared Janie’s charm worked with all sorts, but Hannah knew she didn’t have that Harper gift when it came to uniting people.

The woman didn’t wait for a response. With her statement made, she sulked away.

Hannah took a seat at one of the tables, hands awkwardly folded. Her eyes surveyed the exists – a medbay to her right, some sort of battery at the end of the hall. There was another office toward the right, but the lights were dark. All the doors were locked.

Some welcome.

There was a crash to her left, and she watched as a fidgeting young Krogan – younger than she’d ever seen in public, not even crested yet – stomped into the mess hall.

“Hello,” she said, blinking in surprise. She had not expected the Illusive Man to allow Janie to recruit aliens beyond her turian friend – but perhaps the Alliance had overestimated his fanaticism. It was possible - their intelligence on Ceberus had always been horribly incomplete. Far too many in the intelligence community were willing to ignore Cerberus - rarely, after all, did they go after  _human_ targets. They had only tightened up on profiling them after Kohaku, once Cerberus proved it had the hubris to dare go after their own. 

The Krogan growled in response, his eyes looking as if he wanted to rip apart as quickly and messily as he ripped upon a ration bar.

“I will not speak to you.”

“I’m not your enemy,” she said, her voice a well-practiced blade, but the Krogan merely laughed.

“Shepard is a battle master beyond compare. What you are doing to her is…shameful.” His eyes narrowed as he popped another piece of ration into his mouth. “Her mate and I should pound you into dust.”  
  
_Mate?_

She froze, the krogan still chuckling as he stalked away.  It was absurd, given their situation, how much it had taken her by surprise. Janie had a boyfriend. A potentially – no, _definitively_ – Cerberus boyfriend.

Hannah swallowed. Arahot looked bad. Would look worse with _intimate_ Cerberus connections.

Earth just might want to hang her daughter for this.

She put her head in her hands. She had to talk to Janie – had to make her see reason. Her mind whirled over thoughts of potential ways to say it, but none of it sounded right: _have you gone mad_ was too judgmental even for  a mother, but _Janie please tell me about your special someone_ was certainly not appropriate either.

She could not say how long she stayed like this. She knew only that she waited, and Janie did not come.

Others came and went – an older Salarian was her favorite, as he was, unlike the other crew members, pleasant. And, given his motormouth, distracting.

He sat across from her, his large eyes blinking curiously at her.

She looked up and he smiled.

“Hmm.” The salarian hummed, then reached out one hand before she could think, his omni lighting up before him.

“Red hair genetic trait in humans, yes? Mutation! Fascinating.” He clicked a few notes into his omni-tool. “Strong genetic similarity between mother and daughter – cheekbones, hair, eyes.” A long, reptillian blink. “Possibly clone?”  
  
“No.” It figured the one time she found someone who was friendly was the exact time she did not want company. The Shepard luck at work.

“Ah!” There was a bright flash, and Hannah knew she’d gone into some Salarian’s research wall on Space-Pin. “Will keep genetic information on file. Strong resemblance suggests may suggest would be a good match with Shepard for genetic material should donation be necessary.” He sniffed. “Registered organ donor?”  
  
She was spared the indignity of responding by an Alliance signal coming over her comm. She sighed when she saw the name on it – she’d been hoping to have more time to talk to Janie privately, but if Hackett was calling, her time was up. Hackett’s voice boomed out, as unwelcome as it was crystal-clear.

“It’s time,” He said. “I’m sorry.”  
  
But it didn’t matter that he was sorry, or that he didn’t like his duty. He was a soldier, and this his fight as much as it was hers.

“I know.” She said. She nodded to the salarian. “Please excuse me.”  
  
She stood up, wincing at the sound of the chair scrapping backwards. “VI – uh…”  
  
“EDI,” The salarian helpfully replied.

“EDI – present location of Jani-Jane Shepard?”  
  
“Commander Shepard is in on the bridge.”  
  
She frowned. That was an odd place for someone to be if they were going to rendezvous with Alliance command. It was a very good place to be if someone was planning on slipping out of the airlock.

“The bridge?”  
  
“Currently, she is standing 5 meters from the decontamination chamber.”  
  
Hannah Shepard felt her stomach drop. Janie was making a run for it. It was not a good idea. It was, in fact, quite possibly the stupidest idea Janie had ever had – and Hannah was her mother, and could remember all of Janie’s bad ideas. This one was, officially, worse than the time she decided to climb the twenty foot tree outside Grandpa’s Harper’s yard and jump onto the roof. Worse even than the time she tried to jump into Lake Michigan with her omni-tool active, so she could listen to music while she swam.

If Janie set one foot outside that door without an armed escort, she would be considered hostile and she would be shot down.

End of story.

And no amount of “your daughter served with honor” would make that better. 

She lost Janie once.

She was _not_ going to lose her again.

Hannah Shepard bolted to the elevator and jammed the door.

She had trusted Janie too much.

She had given Janie time. _H_ _ours_. And she never once had even thought that maybe, maybe this wasn’t the little girl who she had raised and loved.

Two years was a long time, and deep ops changed a person. She’d seen Anderson suddenly age 20 years after a mission in the Skillian Verge; she’d grown into a mother a hell of a lot faster than she probably would have if it hadn’t been for Shanxi. She’d seen Jack go from the sweetest guy she’d ever met to a hardened soldier during their time on Shanxi, his eyes always scanning the horizon for skullfaces.

And now Janie – Janie -

“EDI!” she yelled, as the elevator began it’s slow and laborious climb up the floors of the ship. Nearly a half-century of space flight, and they still couldn’t fix the damn elevators to go at any pace faster than glacial. “Is Jane Shepard still on board the Normandy?”  
  
“Yes.” The VI sounded as if the answer was meant to comfort her, although she knew that was impossible. Not even Cerberus could program their VI’s to emote – such things led to the Geth. “Commander Shepard is currently 5 meters from the decontamination chamber.”

 _Second thoughts, Ja **n** ie?  _She thought. _Good_.

Maybe there was more of her mother in Janie than Hannah thought. _For once_ , she prayed, _don't be your father's daughter._  

“C'mon Janie,” She murmured under her breath as the elevator finally stopped. “Prove to me that you’re the soldier I raised you to be.”  
  
With the ship docked at the Citadel, the CIC was empty and the lights half-dimmed. She blinked, her eyes adjusting to the low light. Janie was nowhere in sight.

As her mother, Hannah Shepard wanted to run through the corridor, shouting her daughter’s name. But she’d already laid down her arms too much for Janie, and, as a soldier, such behavior would be unforgivable. She couldn’t shout out her name; she had to observe the situation. If Janie was hostile, she would be forced to raise arms against her, though it would break her own heart to do so.

She slipped out of the elevator quietly, tip-toeing through the flight deck. She was a soldier. So she did what soldiers should do – she assessed the situation.

There were two voices talking toward the cockpit – one a higher pitched, feminine voice; the other a deep, masculine one, with a subtle twang that screamed turian. She frowned. She was aware Janie had a turian crew member – she remembered their meeting on the Citadel a few short months ago well – but, come to think of it, she hadn’t seen him in the mess.

_I’m on Shepard’s team. Not the Illusive Man’s._

And he was the gunnery officer – he’d have to cross her field of vision to make it anywhere else on the ship.

…Which meant he had never been in the battery the entire time she’d been there.

Her stomach dropped.

Had he been with Janie the whole time? Were they running together? Her mouth twitched. A definitive odd couple there – a turian and a human tagging along together would definitively raise a few eyebrows, and would certainly get them noticed, no matter where they went in Hierarchy or Alliance space.

A few more steps, and the voices became clearer.

“I don’t want to go,” the turian said, and she heard the sub-vocals heavy and wet with what sounded almost like a sob.

“I know.” Janie: equally sad, with the soft tremor in her voice reserved for the times when she gathered her strength to stop herself from crying.

“I don’t want _you_ to go.” The turian, still sad, but with a new emotion underlying it – anger.

“I know.” A soft sigh. “Garrus, I - “  
  
“It’s not fair.” A growl, low but enough to raise the hair on Hannah’s arms. One of her hands hovered over her gun on instinct, even if she realized it was the same man as she had met on the Citadel. “You’re a damn hero, Shepard, and your government just treats you like - “

“Hundreds of thousands of batarians died, Garrus.” She sighed soflty. “Gotta pay the price.”  
  
“ _All_ of them would have died if the Reapers had come through – we could be dead now! They are _ingrates_ , Shepard.”  
  
“Garrus - “

She heard the dull thwack of armor colliding, but was not close enough to see what, exactly, had occurred.

She moved faster, sacrificing silence for speed.  
  
“It’s…it’s not fair,” He said, quietly. “The first thing that goes right and now they’re just going to…”  
  
“They can’t take this.” Janie’s voice, still sad, had a new quality – one that was warm and pleased. “Nobody – nobody – can take this away from us, Garrus, unless we let them.” There was a beat, one that was almost palpable, and in that time, she’d gotten close enough that she could see them from her position against the far wall.

They were standing together, in a position that was nothing if not _intimate._ Janie had her arms wrapped around the turian’s neck, and his were wrapped around her waist – quite literally. He had his head bent at an odd angle, pressing his forehead down on hers. “I’m not going to let anyone get in our way.” He said, and if she heard a soft gasp, she was not sure if it was Janie’s or her own.

She had to bite down on her fingers seconds later, when Garrus grabbed Janie’s back and bent her down into what even Hannah could recognize was an attempt at a human version of a kiss. Janie closed her eyes and clung close to him, her hands finding purchase on the back of his skull.

 _He doesn’t even have hair_ she thought, her thoughts numb to all but the most inane of stunned realizations.

The Krogan had said she was with her mate – and fool that she was, Hannah had assumed the Krogan had meant a Cerberus, _human_ boyfriend.

This was simultaneously so much better and yet so much worse.

“I just want to be with you,” He whispered. “Everything else doesn’t matter. I…” Vakarian trailed off, but whatever he left unsaid, Janie understood. Janie pulled him tight to her in response, and she heard a soft sniffle. Vakarian’s arms closed around her daughter, and weird or not, Hannah’s heard plunged deep into her stomach as she saw him gently hold her daughter’s shaking back, comforting her.

They stayed that way for a long moment.

When her tears stilled, Janie leaned up on her tip-toes and pressed her forehead to his. Vakarian made a horribly choked noise – a sob? - and clung tight to her.

“I know.” Janie smiled with a fondness that equally unnerved her mother. _They’re in love. They’re completely and utterly in love with one another._

Janie had never been sweet on a boy before – and, privately, she’d thought that her granddaughters might be long-lived little blue girls instead of energetic pink or brown ones.

Now it appeared she’d picked the entirely wrong sort of extraterrestrial romance.

That thought was sour in her mouth, but she bit it down and remained hidden.

She wanted nothing more than to run for the airlock, for the elevator – anywhere to avoid seeing what Janie most certainly would have wanted to have been a private moment. However, she knew any movement would draw more attention to herself, and the last thing she wanted was to ruin Janie’s last few moments of happiness with her…her boyfriend.

However strange he was, he seemed to have her back, and Janie needed that more than anything.

_I’m on Shepard’s team._

At least, she thought darkly, it proved that Cerberus aren’t controlling Janie. She doubted that the oh-so-Illusive Man  would exactly be drooling about the news that Janie was shacking up with _a turian_. Scuttlebutt said that the Illusive Man hated the turians far more than any other race.

“You better get going.,” Janie said, pressing a kiss into the turian’s palm. “Mom will be up here any second wondering why I’m not ready to turn in and head back to Alliance territory.” The turian made a small noise of distress – one that brought to mind many memories. Of course, in most of those memories, evoking such a noise was something she was once proud of. To break a turian’s pride was, they whispered on Shanxi, something reserved only for the heroic and the very, very lucky.

But she didn’t feel very proud for making him cry here.

“Ssshh, shhh.” She watched Janie throw her arms around him and saw him lean into her. It looked almost comical – he was over a head taller than her, and his broad chest left no mystery as to who, exactly, had more strength, yet he was shaking in Jane’s arms. “This isn’t goodbye.”  
  
“You said that last time.” His voice was thick, sub-vocals nearly drowning out his primary voicebox. “And then you…”  
  
“Not. Gonna. Happen.” Janie ran her fingers down his long fringe, and Hannah wondered if the spikes were sharp. If so, Janie had clearly had a lot of practice, because she didn’t hesitate and stroked in long, swift touches. “Bigger, badder, stronger. You’ve seen the scars.”

He said nothing, but his arms folded around her. “Shepard, I…”  
  
“Don’t.” She shook her head. “This is not goodbye. It’s not. This is just…see you later.”  
  
“Just in case, well…I – I…I need to tell you…”  
  
“Tell me next time.” Janie’s voice was wavering and she sounded like she could break into tears at any minute. “Give me something to look forward to.”

“Okay.” He bent his head downwards and rubbed his forehead against hers, and the two held that pose for a moment, eyes closed. She’d seen turians do that a few times on the citadel, but had never known the meaning. Even without it, though, she could understand that the act was something intimate.

She once again felt uncomfortable, as only a stranger in her daughter’s life could feel.

She’d always trusted Janie, but now she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever really known her at all.

The turian departed, and she watched Janie follow him with her eyes, out the port and into the throng of bodies that was ever-present on the Citadel.

“You can come out of hiding, mom,” Janie called, though she did not turn to face her.

She closed her eyes and resisted the urge to smack her head into one of the panels covering the officer’s stations in the CIC. Dammit. She wasn’t sure what was worse – the fact that she had been present for the whole thing, or the fact that Janie knew that she had been there.

“Sorry.” She dusted off her jacket and stood up.

“Thanks for not interrupting,” Janie said, but she didn’t sound thankful. Her voice was quiet, barely a whisper: she sounded utterly defeated.

Hannah’s heart broke. A part of her had wondered if Arahot had been a cry for help from Janie – a desperate plea to be rescued by the Alliance. She’d been furious as only a mother could be when she’d found that Hackett had been giving Janie jobs “on the side” during her time with Cerberus, dangerous jobs Janie did without complaint for Alliance benefit.

Janie’s ability to do such tasks, though, had proved Janie’s loyalty to the good guys, she had thought.

And perhaps it had.

But this visit had also shown Hannah that Janie had made a home here, on this strange not quite-entirely Cerberus ship, and that Hannah, in the end, had been intruding.

She walked up to Janie and placed her hand on her daughter’s own. Janie, eyes unblinking because they were filled with tears and Shepards Did Not Cry, made no move to take her own, and she understood this, in a way, was a sort of test, to determine her loyalty.

She closed her eyes and squeezed Janie’s hand. “Why don’t you tell me about this boy of yours?”

Janie looked at her, expression surprised, and Hannah swallowed a deep breath of air before forcing herself to add the next sentence to prove to Janie that she was _absolutely_ faithful in her daughter. “He seems nice.”  
  
“He is,” Janie smiled, and it was the blushing, soft kind, but the wet eyes didn’t suggest happiness. “I really do want you to meet him some day.”  
  
Twenty years ago, she could never have imagined it, and even now she wasn’t comfortable with it, but… One glance at her daughter’s wet eyes all but told her where she needed to stand on this issue.

“Okay.” She squeezed Janie’s hand. “We’ll have to set something up in a few months, yeah?”  
  
Janie said nothing, but she squeezed her hand hard, and, favoritism or no, Hannah Shepard wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulder.   
  
Whatever happened, she wasn’t going to let Janie go through it alone. 


	4. The Fourth Time Hannah Shepard Met Garrus Vakarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fourth time she met Garrus Vakarian, she knew something was wrong, but neither of them had time to fix it.

The Fourth Time Hannah met Garrus Vakarian, it was him buzzing her over the comms. Over her daughter’s comm line, specifically. Her heard dropped into her chest when she saw it, the small, insistent _Jane Shepard dialing…_ with a turian face in the comm-cam. Like any mother, she’d feared he was calling to tell her the worst.

With the Reaper war on, she didn’t talk to Janie very much. It was an understandable distance – Janie had never been the type of girl who dialed up her mom on vid-com every day, and both Hannah and Janie had jobs that were nothing if not consuming.

But given all the families who were torn apart by the war – who didn’t get the option to talk to their loved ones – it felt selfish not to take the opportunity, from time to time, to check in.

So she did. Not every day, because neither have the time for that, and not all the time. But…When all the news coming in was overwhelmingly horrible and the comm lines were open, sometimes Hannah needed to see her daughter, just to make the universe feel a bit less horrible.

The calls were short, to the point – they never talked for long, and in this war, neither felt right tying up the bandwidth when vital info might be coming in – but it was enough. Hannah got to see her Janie, alive and…well, _alive_.

And that was enough. That was all that mattered.

But it didn’t take a mother’s touch to know that her daughter was suffering; she’d seen her daughter age fast in this war. They all were, she supposed – her famous vibrant red hair had more than a few grey strands in it now. She’d seen the shadows blossoming under Janie’s eyes, the gaunt cheekbones and frown lines becoming more prominent.

She knew why: stress and anger and grief, all gnawing away at Janie and her both until all that that was left to them was dust.

But if her daughter lived long enough to complain that her joints ache and that her bones hurt, then that would be all that mattered.

And that, in the end, was why she had to see her. She had to know Janie was alive, that she was still moving, even if she wasn’t entirely okay. She took the time to talk, and Janie, in turn, took the time to listen, and it was enough.

But it was always a one way call: Hannah to Janie. If it weren’t war time, and it weren’t Janie – always throwing herself into something all the way, or not at all – she’d have been concerned,

And when she found Garrus Vakarian’s steadily growing familiar face lighting up in her holo, she was terrified. She didn’t really have time to talk – they would be coming out of the warp in just a few moments – but she accepted the call, heart pounding. _Please be ok, Janie. Please be OK._

“Vakarian?”  
  
The image fuzzed into being as the connection stabilized, and she bit back a gasp at the look of him. She hadn’t seen him since she took Janie in, but he looked tired, weathered – even turians were aging fast in this war.

She really shouldn’t be surprised, she thought, though she was. All their famous military prep, and yet even the turians were caught almost utterly unprepared for this kind of assault.

At least, she hoped it was this war that had him looking so old and miserable. She knew little about him, only that he had rejoined the Normandy ground team. When she asked if they were still seeing one another, Janie had only given her a soft smile.  For Janie, that much of a slip was a telling admission.  

“Is Janie hurt?” She asked, and captain or no, her voice was more glass than steel. She winced.

“Jane’s fine.” He said, but he didn’t sound like she was. His voice was fragile, small; he sounded very tired. “But…”  
  
He hesitated for a second, and she saw him fighting to keep the words inside himself, trying to make up whether or not to tell her something. Hannah waited, impatiently. She knew turians well enough to know that any attempt to try to get him to simply spill the beans would result in him not telling her anything.  

“I’m worried about her.” He said, after a moment or two.

“Why?” She asked, though she knew. They all knew the reasons.

“She isn’t sleeping well.” He said, and when she raised an eyebrow, she was satisfied that he lowered his eyes. Whether it was in shame or just discomfort, it was reassuring that some things were universal, and talking about your sex life with your potential mother in law was one of them.

She froze a bit as those words ghosted along her sub-conscious – _mother in law_ – but was surprised at how automatic that thought was. He was certainly the only boy Janie ever mentioned dating to her, but, then again, Janie kept her secrets.

Still, she wondered how much of that first thought would one day be accurate.

“I see.” She nodded. “I sympathize. None of us are getting much sleep these days.”

He flinched, and she knew he read her response as as “ _What do you want me to do about it?_ ”  It was not necessarily inaccurate. She was frustrated by it, but truth was, she was far enough away that she just couldn’t help Janie through her nightmares.

“Jane just…” Vakarian closed his eyes, and his mandibles agitated in a manner that she remembered signaled discomfort. “She throws herself into everything. And she’s thrown herself into this, too, but she never dials herself back. Even when she’s off duty, her mind’s still on the war.”

“That’s who she is.” She said. _Better you realize it now._ “That’s my – _our_ – Janie.”  

His mandibles twitched into a grin, and she smiled in return. Admitting that Janie belonged to them both now seemed to make him happy. She wasn’t that surprised – from what she remembered, family was important to most turians, and Vakarian seemed to be no different in that regard.

“I thought maybe we could take her mind off of it.” He said, and she had to admit, her curiosity was piqued.

“What are you thinking?”  
  
“Normandy’s due for shore leave on the Citadel in a couple weeks in order to complete some repairs from the retrofit.” He nodded. “I heard Janie mention that the Orizaba is due as well.”

“We are due, but we don’t have time scheduled, Vakarian.”  
  
His eyes met her, a bold, crystalline blue that reminded her of Janie’s father. What would Jack have made of Vakarian, she wondered? Would he, too, have decided Janie’s happiness was everything?  
  
“Would it be possible to make time?” He asked. He sounded confident, though she wondered how common it was to ask such a favor in the Turian Hierarchy. But then, family, too, was important to them. She couldn’t help but wonder if Jack would have come around to him – but now was not the time to think about the ghosts of the past.  
  
“I can’t promise anything.” She shrugged. “The fifth fleet is day to day – we might be able to come in for our repairs; we might just be patching things up so we can continue the fight.”

“I see.” He coughed. “I had hoped to get you in person but…Do you think you could at least send Janie a vid-comm during the break? She always…feels better, after seeing you.”  
  
“I don’t see why.” She chuckled, trying to hide the bitterness in her voice as she spoke. “It’s not like Janie tells me much of anything.”

And, of course, by anything, she meant the _seven foot turian_ that Janie never bothered telling her that she was seeing for months, if not years.

“That’s part of who she is.” Vakarian said, throwing her own words back at her, though she didn’t sense any malice in him. She wasn’t trained in sub-vocal expression, but she could read body language well, and his was well-meaning. “She doesn’t want you to worry.”

“Worrying is a parent’s job.” She crossed her arms and took a deep breath. Time to test Vakarian’s mettle. “You’ll know that some day if you stick around, I think.”

He froze, and his mandibles twitched on his jaw for several seconds. “You uh…wouldn’t have a problem with me and Jane…?”

“If we all survive this, Vakarian, I think I’ll be too pleased with _that_ to put up too much of a fuss on the grandkids.” She crossed her arms as he gawked at her – and even with his foreign face, she was quite sure _gawked_ was the right word. “And I will at least call her. But you need to tell me one thing.”

“Okay.”  
  
“And you’ll swear to be honest.”   
  
He pressed a hand to his chest, a turian vow of solemnity. “Okay.”  
  
“How serious are you, about Jane? Is this…long-term?”  
  
“I’m serious.” He looked away, scratching his neck. “And uh, I’d like it to be…long-term.”  
  
“Good.” She said. He was a turian, yes, but he wasn’t bad – and if he was that dedicated to Janie, then Hannah Shepard would sleep a bit easier, knowing someone who loved Janie was watching her back.

She smirked as Garrus gave her a wild look, his eyes widening as realization of what she had told him set in.

“I’ll be in touch.” She said, and disconnected the call.

Let him mull on that, she decided, while she went about winning this damn war.


	5. The Fifth Time Hannah Shephard Met Garrus Vakarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fifth time Hannah Shepard met Garrus Vakarian, they were both in mourning.

The fifth time Hannah Shepard met Garrus Vakarian, they were both in mourning. And it was their own damn fault. Hannah, especially, knew better than to even hope that they’d all live through this war.

But once things had swung their way – once the Alliance started scoring some victories, even Pyrrhic ones – it was so easy to think that, with the way the battles were going, they’d be home with their families within a year.

Hannah Shepard knew that there were always casualties. She remembered her husband coming home in a body bag, remembered what it felt like to have a cold stone in place of a husband, a piece of metal instead of a heart.

But she found herself hoping anyway. Desperately. And she was not the only one.

She wondered if she should have said anything when her crew talked about their own daydreams. O'Donnell was a damn good XO, but when he made remarks that began with “When this is over, I’ll….”, she found they cast a long shadow over the bridge.

As a captain, she decided not to. Reminding him that his family might not be waiting when they got back to the Alliance would only distract him from the mission, and the mission was  _everything_.  
  
It wouldn’t matter, she thought, if she said anything. Nothing could bring her husband or O'Donnell ‘s family back – if they were gone, they were gone.

All Hannah could do was fight to protect what was left. Just like Janie.

During the final push, the  _Orizaba_  stayed in orbit. It was not where she wanted to be – she would have rather been fighting on the ground team, with Anderson, freeing the land of his youth – but she hadn’t held a gun in years. She knew she was not as useful to him down there as she was up in the stars.

So she fought; Reaper vs ship, ship vs Reaper – a bold dance among ancient, distant stars.

She thought – she wasn’t sure, but she thought – she saw the  _Normandy_  fighting with her  _Orizaba_  before the Crucible fired. But the  _Normandy_  wasn’t the only stealth frigate in the Alliance’s fleet now, and she never had time to dwell on its appearance. She was too preoccupied with protecting her crew, in making sure the ship stayed up and fighting.

Once the Crucible fired, that changed. In sixty seconds, the battle was over.

The Reapers were dead. 

And now that the battle was won, finding the _Normandy_ was all she could think about.

The victory cheer coming from Earth over her comm was almost deafening. The cheer coming from her crew as they realized what was happening was even louder.

O'Donnell screamed and actually hugged her, and for once she let the steel facade drop and hugged him back.

Now that it was over, they could both go home to their families.

\- - - 

O'Donnell was luckier than most: his family had survived, hiding out in Minneapolis’ shelters through a bitter and cold winter.

Hannah Shepard wasn’t so lucky. Janie was nowhere to be found. Like the Normandy, she was listed MIA.With the war over, Hannah Shepard suddenly had the luxury of time and devoted all of it to finding her daughter.

After Alchera, she wouldn’t believe Janie was dead. Not without a body. 

Unfortunately, no one seemed to know where Janie was. A few the meager survivors from Anderson’s final assault swore that she was there, on the ground. One even said she ran up into some kind of beam, one that Anderson followed. Others disagreed. They’d seen Vakarian getting evac’ed at the very end, and everyone knew he’d never have left her to go on alone.

Nobody seemed to know exactly where Janie was at the last, crucial moment.

Hannah concentrated on the  _Normandy_. Janie’s ship was also MIA, but the eyewitness reports were more consistent.

She had hard proof that the Normandy’s call sign reported in during the final fleet check before the battle. But that was the last anyone saw of it during the fire fight – there were no reports of her going down, no debris fields on earth that would match a ship the size of the  _Normandy_.

There were several eye witness reports who said that it was called in for an evac for her daughter’s ground team. That made more sense, except that the Normandy ground team undoubtedly included her daughter, who had always viewed surrendered as a dirty word.

The only conclusion Hannah Shepard could reach was that the  _Normandy_ got pushed off course during the beam firing sequence, and crash landed somewhere. She refused to consider the alternative; that the Reapers had taken out the ship, and Janie too, taken them so fast that no one had seen it. Nobody died without leaving something behind. Not even Jack, who had come home as little more than a bag of meat, had disappeared entirely.

She rallied with other survivor’s seeking loved ones on the  _Orizaba._ The number of volunteers was astounding. Like Janie, Hannah found herself working with a multi-national crew: Asari desperately seeking their daughters; Krogan looking for clan members; even, to her surprise, turians and batarians sought her out. They had all lost too much, and even knowing it was a long shot, they banded together.

And together, they searched the Sol system for ghosts.

She repeated the same call as they traveled.

“ _This is the SSV Orizaba. We come in peace, looking for survivors. Do you copy?”_

For a long while, there was no reply.

And there was  _so much_  radio silence. Without the relays, it was eerie, cold and silent in space. They were missing the interstellar traffic that had been, for most of Hannah’s life, a regular part of background noise. Not even getting a ping response from most planets was almost heartbreaking.

It was not until they had turned back, passing over the southern hemisphere of Earth to refuel, when she heard it.

“SSV  _Orizaba_  – this is the  _Normandy_.”

And her heart broke for all the right reasons.

\- - -

A cheer went up through her ship; O'Donnell, who had insisted on coming along with his family, clapped her back and smiled. His expression said what she felt- now she had found her family too. The war to end all wars had turned out to have a bittersweet ending.

“ _Normandy_ , do you need assistance?” She asked, and hoped her voice did not tremble.

“Affirmative," their pilot said. “We’ve incurred some damages.”  
  
She wanted to ask about Janie –  _is she with you? Is she safe_? - but was too afraid of the answer. She could not fall apart – not now.  

Instead, she said, “Acknowledged. Initiating docking procedures.”  
  
She waited, eyes closed, for the Normandy. She knew it would either bring her face to face with Janie or with her daughter’s death.

\- - -

It brought neither of those things.   
  
The  _Normandy_  ground crew gave her more details – yes, they were on the ground in the final assault; yes, Janie was with them. But they couldn’t tell her what happened to Janie, except that she was the only one not evacuated.

Which meant either Janie was vaporized, a final casualty or war, or Janie was lying in a field hospital, in bad enough shape to not be easily identified.

At five weeks MIA, Hannah knew which was more likely. So did the Normandy’s crew.

The  _Normandy_  crew was clearly already in morning. Spectre Ashley Williams gave her a salute and her daughter’s jailer, Lieutenant Vega, followed her. Their pilot, Jeff Moreau, has red rimmed eyes that spoke of long nights full of tears. Cortez and Traynor spoke fondly to her of a woman they barely knew, yet somehow knew them well. The Asari, T'soni, was more guarded, and Javik even more so – except to tell her that her daughter was an excellent commander. The quarian sweetheart in engineering – Tali?- actually saluted her and thanked her for the dextro rations she had brought.

From her skinny frame, Hannah knew the dextro crew has been on starvation rations.

Vakarian was in an even worse state, though. She was shocked by how skinny he was, the way his armor gaped in places. His eyes were haunted and his limbs were shaky. She didn’t know a lot about turian physiology, but she knew this wasn’t healthy. She grabbed him by the arm, not taking no for an answer when he tried to talk to her about getting the guns online.

The guns did not matter.

She dragged him into the captain’s quarters; Janie’s quarters. There were reminders of her everywhere here; a hoodie draped over a chair, a hamster spinning at a wheel. Vakarian collapsed into a chair, overwhelmed.

Hannah put her hand on his shoulder.

“Have you been eating?”  
  
“No.” He turned his face away from her, scrutinizing a cabin that he no doubt knew well. She watched his back as he shivered, arms folded up into himself in his own type of body armor. “Dextro processor’s down. Tali can’t…can’t go without.”  
  
“I brought some supplies.” They’d taken on an entire shipment of dextro supplies, thrice as many as were needed to feed her dextro-life-form crew mates. At first, she thought it was taking up too much room, but after seeing Vakarian suffering after only a few weeks of malnutrition, she was glad to have it.  “Will you eat with me?”  
  
“I’d rather…rather focus on finding Jane.” His sub-vocals were heavy with an emotion that she damn well knew. “I can’t…” He shook his head. “She’s out there, I know it.”  
  
“I want to find her, too.” She nodded. “But you’re no good to her dead, or near dead. Look at you – haven’t ate, haven’t slept. You’re a wreck, Vakarian.”  
  
“How did you I know I haven’t – haven’t slept?”  
  
She motioned her head toward the bed. “Janie doesn’t sleep with turian pillows, last I checked. The bed isn’t made – not unusual for Janie, but turians don’t leave their sleeping areas open.” That had been a weakness they had exploited a few times on Shanxi. “I haven’t seen a lot of turian beds, but every damn one of them has been well made.”  
  
He chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “You’d have made a good detective.”  
  
She shrugged. “I’m a mother. Comes with the territory.” She stood up and put an arm around his too-slim wrist. He didn’t flinch, and she took that as a sign of victory. “C'mon, kid. Let’s get you some food. We can work while we eat if it makes you feel better.”  
  
“Okay.” He took a deep sigh. “Okay.”

\- - -

Garrus Vakarian had fallen asleep in her cabin.

He obviously had not meant to, but after multiple days awake and barely any nutrition, exhaustion had taken its toll.

She had gone to warm up some dextro rations and when she had come back, Garrus’s head was on her table, sound asleep.

She debated waking him, but decided not to, simply placing the rations by him quietly and pulling out her datapad to go through the information the other officers on the Normandy had sent her.

They were towing her daughter’s ship now, towing them back toward the fuel depot and hopefully toward Janie. The fact that none of the crew on the Normandy could give a definitive statement as to Janie’s whereabouts – not even Vakarian – made her fear that perhaps the second time death had come for Janie, it had claimed her.

“Jane!” Vakarian sat upright and she whipped around, expecting to see her daughter cross through the doorway even though she knew such a thing was impossible.

“Jane!” He repeated, and his voice was desperate; mad. “Don’t go, Jane.” He made an odd, awkward noise that was somewhere between a sob and a screech. “You can’t…can’t leave me alone. Not again.”  
  
She bit down on her lip as she watched him thrash in his sleep, debating whether or not to wake him. She knew he needed his sleep, but seeing him in distress over Janie was breaking her heart.

“Jane, please!” He made the shriek/sob again. “You don’t understand, she’s at the beam! I have to go!”  
  
That broke her resolve.

She moved to his side and gently nudged him. His skin was softer than she’d anticipated; not as soft as a human would be, but it felt more like hide than the stone it resembled.

He awoke with a start, pulling away from her fingers. His eyes carefully darted around the room – no doubt looking for Janie – and when he did not find what he sought, his eyes turned to hers. “I must have fallen asleep.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s alright.” She nudged the dextro rations toward him and he slowly took a bite.

“Never thought I’d find the day when these tasted okay.”  
  
She opened her own levo ration packet and smirked. “You’re telling me. You really think that in 30 years of space travel, they’d find a way to make these taste less like ass.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Jane, uh, likes them ~~.~~ ” She noted his use of the present tense and approved. Good boy. She would not give up hope for Janie until there was proof, one way or another, as to her whereabouts.  “I always thought human ones must not taste like feet, judging by the way she defends them.”  
  
“She’s just used to them.” Hannah chuckled. “Janie mostly grew up in the stars. I think this was her normal breakfast, lunch, and dinner all the way through high school.”

“When we get back, I’m going to look for her.” He said, voice unwavering. “She has to be there. She has to be.”  
  
She reached over and squeezed his hand.

“We’ll find her,” she said, and she meant it.


	6. Epilogue

It was hard, seeing what was left of the Citadel.  
  
It had rained down in pieces; some burned up in re-entry, others had fallen over what was left of Belize; Belmopan was all but unrecognizable. The rescue crews had been working for weeks, with emergency hospitals set up in several points along the perimeter.   
  
It didn’t matter much. There were few survivors, but the survivors had been precious if few.  
  
It was made worse by her isolation. She had parted ways with Vakarian. He had gone on a long tour of the field hospitals  Vakarian was delicate, was barely eating. She was glad to leave him to trying to find Janie in the hospitals; she would look elsewhere. He had left her with strict promises and her omni code; he would call her if he found anything. 

Meanwhile, Hannah had gone to the fields of the dead. 

  
Despite the tropical setting, the mood was somber: asari, turians, krogans, quarians, batarians – all had come to rifle through the debris of the Citadel, in hopes of finding their loved ones.  All had haunted faces. When they saw her, they looked back at her, their eyes understanding. They were all brothers and sisters in mourning.   

She had trouble meeting their eyes and instead concentrated on the dig. She dug up countless corpses, someone else’s daughters or sons. Some had their eyes open in unrelenting horror; those, she closed before she called in the team. It was a small mercy, but it was something she could do, so she did.  
  
She and Garrus rendezvoused every evening; in person, at first, then over the phone, as Garrus travel further, to field hospitals on the outskirts of the blast. Every day was the same: no news on Janie; bad news on everyone else. Hope was fading fast.  
  
It was hard, doing what she did. She had to bite down hard to get through the days. Thankfully, she did not have to do it alone. While many on the  _Orizaba_ had gone back into deep space, seeking answers, a few stayed behind. Some of Shepard’s crew had come as well, including the perfect woman, Miranda, and her sister. They had, somehow, survived, and survived together. Hannah tried hard not to be jealous when the young woman hugged her sister; it reminded her only of the daughter that was unaccounted for.  
  
The biggest punch in the gut, though, came when she reached a shattered corridor. She’d gone ahead of the others to the epicenter of the blast, gone through a lot of bodies there: countless asari, humans, turians – women and men, young and old. But the  _worst_  came when she reached the center of the shattered corridor and found yet another body, or what she could only assume once was a body, curled up in a pile of broken machinery and dreams.   
  
Her breath caught in her through as a familiar hat caught her attention, somehow comically landed above the rubble. She dug, hard, her fingers scraping rock and steel and praying that it wasn’t who she thought it was.  
  
But it was.  
  
“David,” she said, and felt tears welling behind her eyes; there was no time for sorrows, but to know he’d been taken down, in the end, the indefatigable Anderson – it hurt.   
  
She dug him from the wreckage, respectfully. He was a god damn hero, and she would see to it that he had a hero’s burial in London. She would contact his ex-wife immediately, and Kahlee Sanders, of course, as soon as long-distance comms were back up again.  She made plans while she dug because it was all she could do.   
  
She felt a lump in her throat as she beheld him, looking for all the world like a sacrifice in the smashed up world of glass, fire, and rock. With trembling fingers, she pressed her comm button, “I’ve got another body. It’s Major Anderson.”   
  
There was a long silence on the comms. She swallowed again and wished there was more she could do for him.   
  
“Understood,” came a woman; Miranda, she thought, or the sister. She had a hard time telling which was which over the radio. “I’m on my way with a bag.” Hannah hated that term, hated that even saying  _body bag_  had become too much for them all.   
  
“Are there any others?”   
  
“Still surveying,” she said, though it was hard for her to imagine there were any other survivors, but if there was  _any_  chance her daughter was buried in this rubble, then -  “There’s a lot of damage here. Could use a second hand.”  
  
“Understood. ETA in five,” Miranda – she was sure of it now – said. Miranda said little of her past, but she clearly had some professional deployment in one war zone or another; her poise was proof enough of that.  
  
“See you then,” she said, ending the communication. She looked down at Anderson one more time, kneeling beside him. He looked at peace, and she hoped, in the end, that his end had been what he had wanted.   
  
“You fought well,” she said, softly, reaching out her hand. She grabbed his, already so cold, and squeezed it once. “Thank you.” The words were not enough, couldn’t be enough, but they were all she had to give. Losing Anderson was a harsh blow, and she feared now, that perhaps they wouldn’t find Janie, that perhaps if the Reapers had taken Anderson in the end, they had taken Janie as well.   
  
She swallowed and re-opened her omni, pressing out a now familiar number.   
  
“Vakarian?” She listened through the hiss of the connecting static; ever since the relays had been knocked out of position, their long distance communications had been shot to hell. There weren’t enough QEC communicators to go around, and even being as far apart as they were – perhaps 5 miles? - wasn’t enough to sustain a good connection on the terrestrial waves.   
  
“Ksshhhhttt – Pard – “ came across the line.   
  
“We found Anderson,” she said, and hoped it was enough. The line hissed again, but she couldn’t hear Vakarian, and she wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard her. “He’s – he’s gone.”  
  
She waited for a reply but heard only static; damn comms. Once the relays were gone, the damn comms couldn’t go in a straight line anymore. She flicked the comm-line on her omni wire off. She’d have to try again; Miranda would be there any moment anyway.  
  
She shivered, feeling oddly exposed despite being one of the only ones bothering to search the epicenter of the blast. Most of the hope for survivors had clung to those at the outer edges of the Citadel, which had broken off during entry into the Earth’s atmosphere; rescue efforts were mostly directed there accordingly. Even she knew it was a long shot, to hope that Janie had somehow made it this far, had somehow been preserved but… at this many weeks in, they were running out of places to look.   
  
She heard Miranda’s approach and turned to see her, looking eerily perfect as always. She’d brought several body bags, levitating them behind her.  _Bioti_ _c;_ Hannah made a mental note, then turned toward her.  
  
“He’s over here,” she said. Miranda nodded, and Hannah was thankful for Miranda’s professionalism; the cold, clinical way she handled his body seemed almost like respect.  They worked quickly, but reverently; they cut no corners, putting him in the bag, and Miranda radioed that they’d have one for extraction.  
  
 She pressed her hand to her brow, looking down in the mix of machinery and wires surrounding them and feeling nothing so much as overwhelmed.   
  
“There’s something else here,” Miranda said, walking past her. Hannah’s chest tightened;  _Janie?_ Who else was left, at this point?  
  
Her omni-tool’s comm-line lit up, but she didn’t glance down at her arm as the call came in, her eyes focused entirely on Miranda. She watched her move numbly, as Miranda slowly moved aside some of the machinery trapping the – person?  Corpse?  _Janie_?? She caught a hint of peach skin and nearly screamed, until Miranda pulled off one last large, particularly heavy piece of machinery, and she saw it was a man.  
  
No, not quite a man; a ghost. She moved clumsily toward him, staring in horror. It was a familiar face, an old and tender one. There were years on that face that she had not seen; years on that face, and a life that looked lived too hard and too long. Nicotine stains on the fingertips – other, unidentifiable stains on the face.  
  
“Jack,” she said, and wondered if she was hallucinating. Had the reapers been so cruel as to take her husband twenty years ago and repurpose him as – this? The eyes looked synthetic but the body was so – so human, down to the bloody trail that oozed from a wound on his chest.   
  
“Jack?” She said again, her hands trembling as she reached out. There was another noise in the background, some ugly buzzing thing, but she ignored it as she grasped a hand as cold as the metal she had kept next to her bed for two decades. It couldn’t be him, but at the same time – who else could it be?  
  
And if the Reapers could hold profane something so sacred to her, what chance did she have of saving Janie?   
  
Miranda grabbed her shoulder; the woman was saying something in calm and measured tones. Miranda’s professionalism could not reach her, not here. Her broken heart drowned out all sound, all horror. Was Janie here? Had she died in this miserable room, on this miserable rock? Had Jack – was Jack even here?   
  
She broke away from Miranda, turned away from Jack, her eyes whirling in the dark. There were so many dead, who was to say Janie was not one of them, buried here in this – this  _mausoleum_. She could see so many phantom hands, how many were husbands who had gone for the fight? How many daughters dead in the Citadel? Too many. Too many dead. How could Janie survive, when her husband – her husband who had lived again, another life, and died again, Hannah powerless to stop it again – how could Janie survive?  
  
Miranda broke away from Jack, or whoever he was now, this new Jack, this  _cruel_  joke, and pressed her arms around Shepard’s shoulders.  
  
“Breathe,” she said, softly. “Nothing else.”   
  
Hannah bit her lip and nodded, concentrating on the feel of Miranda’s hands, which were clenched tight on her sides. She wiped at her eyes, realizing that she had been crying. And she couldn’t, not yet; even if the odds looked long – longer than ever – if she gave up, who would fight for Janie?  
     
Her omni went off again but she ignored it, focusing on regulating her breathing. She stared at Miranda, willing the calm of the younger woman into her.   
  
“That was the Illusive Man,” Miranda said after a long moment, her voice almost – pitiful? There was a cadence there that reminded Hannah of widowhood, of abandonment. “I’ve never heard him called Jack. He dealt in titles, not names. He was – I mean, I’m surprised, but – not really. But it just seemed he was…infallible,” she muttered, and Hannah didn’t know what a damn word of that meant. She’d heard of the Illusive Man, but that would mean Jack – would mean –   
  
 _Oh, Jack_ , she thought, feverishly:  _you brought her back to me?_  Or perhaps it wasn’t him, perhaps it was just her mind being cruel – thousands of people in the galaxy, more than one could have that famous Harper dimple –   
“I’ll bag him,” Miranda said, and Hannah nodded, grateful. In truth, she did not want the opportunity to examine him closer, to see that Harper chin and  _know_. It was better to live in doubt, for now – perhaps after she fund Janie, she could look deeper into this Illusive Man, but now –   
  
Her omni went off again.  This time she glanced at the caller ID. Vakarian, again; a quick glance at the missed calls told her that he’d called the last three times too. Her heart fluttered; Vakarian calling this many times when they knew the connection was bad was atypical.   
  
“Vakarian?” she asked, answering.   
  
“Mo-om?” A voice croaked, and for the second time, her world stopped. Miranda, too, stopped; she heard a quick intake of breath, then the hurried zip of the body bag, and Miranda quickly turning toward her.  
  
“Janie?” She whispered, her mouth thick.  “Janie is that – “  
     
“Mo-om!” Janie –  _Janie_  – said.  There was static between the syllables still, but she could not mind.  _Janie!_ She sounded hurt, her voice thick and almost broken, but broken things could be mended – broken things could be fixed.

“I found –” Vakarian said, his words stolen by the static but still, somehow, precious. “Field hosp—. Couldn’t talk until to– jaw –“  
  
“Vakarian.” She said, in a warm and excited breath. “Coordinates. Now.  
”   
“305, 503—2  _Nue–ra señora de la paz_ – fifth – “  
  
 Miranda grabbed her wrist. “She’s on her way.”   
  
She punched in the name of the street, double checking coordinates with the partial ones Garrus had given her.  
  
“I’ll deal with the clean-up,” Miranda said. “Including telling the rest of the crew. Now – go.”  
  
“Why are you helping me?” She asked, though already her legs were pulling her forward. She could not keep herself away from Janie, her feet had a mind of their own, and their only concern was Janie.   
  
“Shepard brought my family together. I am – pleased – to return the favor,” Miranda said, smiling, and Hannah nodded and then – then she was gone.  
  
It was a longer journey than she wanted; on foot, it was at least five-mile’s distance as the crow flew, and the twisted wreckage – and other rescue attempts – made her unable to go the direct route. But never the less, she persisted, her feet moving, her lungs  _burning_  as she ran but – her family was calling.  
  
And Hannah was ready to go home.   
  
It seemed to take forever, but when she finally,  _finally_ found her daughter, bruised but  _not_  broken, alive and  _not_  dead, with the scarred but dutiful man, whose comically talons would not stop holding her daughter’s  _gently_  – she had only a few words, all focused on a beautiful future:   
  
“So when will you two make it official already?”  
  
Garrus Vakarian’s baffled look was almost – almost – worth everything that had happened. And Janie’s smirk – alive and  _there_  and  _amused_  – definitively was.  
  
Maybe their family wasn’t traditional; maybe it had been more broken than she had thought. But they were all still here, and alive, and there was time to rebuild.  
  
\- - -     
  
The sixth time she met Garrus Vakarian, he was fussing over his tuxedo.  
  
“Are you sure about this?” Vakarian asked her, fidgeting with cufflinks that were almost comical on his large hands.  Grandpa Harper had been a big man, but Vakarian was even bigger, as turians tended to be. He looked lost, and Hannah tried not to think of the times when she would have been happy to have seen such an expression on a turian’s face. The times had changed, and she’s seen enough of what had happened to Jack to know that this was the only way forward.  
  
Hannah Shepard had lived long enough to know adaptation was preferable to death.  
  
“Of course,” she said, patting his hand. “Isn’t it a bit late to be getting cold feet, kid?” She jerked her head toward the other stall, where Janie was squirming as  Ashley Williams and her seemingly endless parade of sisters applied her makeup and did her hair. Most of Janie’s old crew was here; Tali'Zorah was fussing with flower arrangements, Janie had  _two_  Krogan running security, Lt. Traynor was running the stereo system, and she’d seen James Vega helping Cortez with “preparing” the honeymoon getaway car. The kids had no shortage of friends, and she was pretty sure damn near all of them would help Garrus down the aisle if need be.   
  
“Nothing like that!” Garrus said, glancing down at the cufflinks. “It’s just…would his spirit approve? I know your husband…”  
  
“ – Left us  _long_  ago.” She gave Vakarian a steely glare, which was no doubt somewhat damped by her mother-of-the-bride outfit. She’d opted to go a bit more traditional than dress blues, but the lavender and green dress wasn’t exactly intimidating. “He couldn’t move on, after the first contact war. But – “   
  
She grabbed his hand, and was surprised by how gentle his touch was when he grasped it. She had no doubt that this was the man that Janie was meant to marry. “ _Life_  is about moving forward. Old Man Tobias Harper and I got along just fine raising Janie without Jack, and I know Tobias wouldn’t mind.”   
  
He nodded his assent, straightening the links on what she supposed was a traditional turian wedding garment. It was funny, she thought, watching him get ready. She wouldn’t’ have imagined this was the man that Janie would marry, but now she couldn’t imagine her son-in-law as anyone else. 


End file.
